Below are the most recent 11 friends' journal entries.

Friday, November 13th, 2009
that_xmas	5:17p	( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
vlvtjones	5:04p	just took a turn for the Douche. My douchebag ankle has been a source of stress and frustration and pain and dread. In fact, it's acting in such a douchebag manner that it deserves to be called by a douchebag name. From now on, it's Chaz. So, Chaz , no fucking surprise, decided to be an utter douchebag this week. Oh, sure, he acted all nice n' sweet for the female physical therapist on Tuesday, but not three hours after the massage and workout, Chaz started in with "oh, I can't walk anywhere, I'll just sit here and be in pain" for, like, the REST OF THE DAY. Chaz kept me from socializing for that evening, and the one after that, too. Just me and Chaz. Sitting on the damn couch, while he keeps asking for more fucking ice, because he's hot and he's sore. Fuck you, Chaz. I'm surprised you didn't ask for an Ed Hardy icepack. I'm beginning to think that this relationship has gone from codependent to outright abusive. In any case. Chaz and I limped back to the PT today. Got more done, and will be back on Tuesday to see what's up. If Chaz doesn't seriously wake the fuck up and stop acting the fool, Ima gonna cut 'em. No, really, if this shit doesn't work out, I might be looking at surgery. Fuck you, Chaz. (Comment on this)
vlvtjones	11:11a	Big Fuckin' Q!!!! This may be a shock to some of you, but I'm a delicate fuckin' flower up in here. I have so much trouble with medications that it's almost scary. That is not to say that I haven't had my fair shake with pharmaceuticals, but I know that the first time I take something, I really should have someone monitor me for signs of fucked-up-edness. I still have a bottle of Ambien, unstarted, in my medicine cabinet; and while I struggle every night with insomnia, I am too scared to take it. I also have mostly full bottles of just about any painkiller you could ask for, because I'll take it for two days (until I get a headache), and then I'll sack up and  tough it out after that. But the one thing that makes me more upset than anything else medication-wise? NyQuil does not work on me. Doxylamine succinate (the sleeping aid) comes with a warning: "May cause excitability, especially in children". And I'm that fucking child. My dad was that fucking child, too. Mom and Fance?  TKO from the Big Fuckin' Q. But this website, Hot Knives, has put together a recipe for "natural KniQuil" that has the properties I need: Soothing your throat? Mint syrup. Clearing out the sinuses? Chiles. Immune booster? Vitamin C, via lemon juice. Knock you the fuck out? Delicious booze.  I cannot wait to try this. I may even do this before I get a cold. Heck, I may just have this on hand for Saturday naptimes. Note: for the Stupid Flu (and you still need to go out): DayQuil tablets, Tequila Sunrises, and a sweaty dance club. Works like nobody's business. I'll have to reverse engineer the medication in DayQuil to see what I can do to make that all-natural as well. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
lj_maintenance [ dwell ]	2:00p	Network Maintenance: Saturday, November 14, 2009 at 04:00-06:00 UTC/GMT EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP. Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!! Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out! --- On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice. Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials. We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait! As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work. (39 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 9th, 2009
mikecap	10:49p	Thanksgiving in Massachusetts? I'm considering coming up to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving weekend - who is around, and wants to hang out that weekend? (22 Comments |Comment on this)
vlvtjones	1:24p	Weekend in review. Friday night saw an impromptu gathering, under bad circumstances - Drool and Gal came to Boston for the weekend because Drool's aunt passed away. She had been ill for a while, and they kind of knew it was coming. They stayed at Fance and Rude's for the weekend, and we all hung out, grabbed dinner at Rino's in Eastie (If you haven't been there, it's a 10 minute walk from the Airport T stop; and the food rivals, if not dominates, some of the best meals I've had in No End.  I shit you not). After dinner we retired to drink beers and play Rock Band until the breaka breaka dawn...well, okay, like 2:00. I did a quickie Haymarket and Foodmaster trip on Saturday morning, then spent the entire rest of the day on cleaning my apartment - it took the better part of 8 hours of organizing, scrubbing, tossing, sweeping, and mopping, but the sumbitch is fucking SPARKLY. And my art is up on the walls! There are things there besides the one giant clock. Exhausted, I laid out the essential instruments for the next day, because... Sunday marked a very important day for me: it was the first day that I could sit down and watch the 1:00 game(s) uninterrupted - previously, my Sundays were counterprogrammed by Gorefest.  And, as the Universe dictates, of course, the lovely and talentedjoeybonbon joined me. We had ridiculous snacks: I fixed up some brown sugar encrusted bacon, served over apple slices and topped with either bleu cheese (my side) or cranberry cheddar (her side). Halftime served up some monkey bread and cream cheese icing. At Drool's recommendation, I found some Dogfish Head Midas Touch to drink - a mead-ish ale that was re-engineered from a concoction discovered in the Tomb of King Midas. Shit's good, yo. Anyway, more than the food or the beer or the game is the most awesome, hilarious time we have as we watch. And, for reals, we need to start our own very colorful color commentary podcast or live stream. I am struggling to recall some of the more interesting gems, but let me just say that there was a lot of talk about neck tattoos, pocket hotties, bad uniform color choices, jumblie injuries, occasional screaming, how NFL red zone was disappointing, more jumblie injuries, end zone dances, Billy Dee turning Lando (the scoundrel!), the maxo-zoom-dweebiest QB in the NFL (hint: it's Peyton), the Mane of Polamalu and how it turns ordinary folks into Pittsburgh fans, and how we love the troops except maybe for that one guy in the front row with the Vick jersey. And that was before halftime. I truly do love football, and hanging out with awesome friends? There really is nothing better. That, my friends, is a WEEKEND.   (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
that_xmas	6:52p	Well, I'll be... ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
vlvtjones	12:05p	Today's Inspirational Lyrics - Paula Cole </div> Yeah. Heard this last night in my "Talented Bitches" playlist. Bawled. Put it on repeat. I really love Paula Cole's voice in this song, the structure of the music is deceptively complex, and the content is heartbreaking. She's one talented bitch. ( she looks like me but a bit prettier ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
vlvtjones	11:20a	I got a broken face! Ah-ha! Ah-ha! Ah-ha! Ah-ha WOO! Forgot the best news of all: No mouth cancer. Just effed up gums and acidy spit, and extravagant vacations for my dentist on my tab. Now, about that lump up near my left armpit...that'll need a closer look. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
vlvtjones	3:16p	How do I know my ankle's a douchebag? Twice-weekly ultrasound treatments and deep tissues massages, that my ass has to pay for. Not to mention the countless cabs I've had to take because my ankle just didn't want to walk any further, and the bitchy way it made me demand seats on the T when I could have stood the whole way, and everything fucking else that my ankle has made me become. And, adding insult to injury, now I have to buy it expensive, ugly shit. Specifically: motion control shoes. No, they're not awesome Robofeet, or the opposite of Data's "Slick Shoes", they are shoes (usually running shoes) that are made to keep my feet in the upright and locked position, rather than rolling all over the place, stressing my ankle tendons only in the directions they like being stressed in. And, foreals, these MFers are UGLY. Take a gander at what women's motion control running shoes look like. I'm going to have fucking Frankenfeet. And did you see how much even Zappos is charging for those bastards? What a fucking douchebag.   (1 Comment |Comment on this)
vlvtjones	10:43a	Short ends for short people Haven't posted in a while, mostly due to the craziness that was GOREFEST. It was a strenuous and challenging and draining and most awesome show. And I know now how to make the most disgusting fake vomit you've ever seen (hint: it's the rice krispies). In the meantime: 1) I feel like my hair has grown about six inches in the last month. It's stupid long now. This could be that with the change in temperature and humidity, my hair lays low, and seems longer. In any case, it's getting caught on the back of my chair when I sit down at work. 2) My douchebag ankle is not getting any better, despite twice-a-week physical therapy with my adorable tomboy PT named Tracie. She's really trying, but even my ankle is more stubborn than her. Love me, love my badass parts. 3) My most favorite jeans ever shat the bed over the weekend, and this causes me anguish. Like every other woman in the world, I have trouble finding good jeans. My issue is that I am both short and large, and have a significant amount of booty and thigh. If they fit in the butt, then they zip at approximately my nipples and also need to be shortened about fourteen inches.  If they're good at the waist and legs, then it takes a 40-mule team to pull the zipper closed. It's just how it is. These bed-shat Most Favorite Jeans ever - a pair of women's petite Liz Clairborne dark wash straight legs - fit everywhere without binding or pulling or hanging low. Like, they were made for me. They needed no darting, no hemming, no belting, nothing. So OF COURSE they are no longer sold. They don't even exist on the company's website. NOTHING. Tim Gunn may have failed me. Anycrap. I bit the bullet and shopped for new jeans. I tried on eight new pairs of jeans, and decided on Levi's 580 boot cut (defined waist, short length). The rise is a bit high for me, and they're just slightly long, and I'm not a huge fan of boot cut...but, they're pretty good. They'll do. And, since they were on sale, they weren't crazy expensive. As a bonus: there was a Michael Kors blouse on final clearance: $17. It's a super soft jersey cream and black graphic print, with a wide neckline, floofy elbow length sleeves, and just the right length. I've gone 1970s styling with it today - hair blown out and center-parted, the blouse paired with a black turtleneck underneath, wide legged black dress pants, and an silver initial necklace hanging right in the middle. Very Gloria Steinem. I dig it. (3 Comments |Comment on this)